Programming ASP.NET MVC 4

Chapter 2. ASP.NET MVC for Web Forms Developers

Even though their architectural approaches are quite different, ASP.NET MVC and Web Forms actually have a lot in common. After all, they are both built on top of the core ASP.NET APIs and the .NET Framework. So, if you are a Web Forms developer looking to learn the ASP.NET MVC Framework, you’re already further ahead than you may think!

In this chapter, we’ll compare and contrast the ASP.NET MVC and Web Forms Frameworks to show how many of the concepts you use to build Web Forms applications relate to the ASP.NET MVC way of doing things. Note that this chapter is geared toward helping developers who are very familiar with the Web Forms Framework and want to translate that knowledge over to ASP.NET MVC to get up and running more quickly. If you are not very familiar with the Web Forms Framework, you may consider skipping this chapter and moving along to the rest of the book.

It’s All Just ASP.NET

You may not have known it, but the framework you’ve been using to develop web pages using the .NET Framework—what you probably call “ASP.NET"—can actually be broken down into two parts: the visual user interface components (aka “Web Forms”) and the nonvisual “backend” web components (aka “ASP.NET”). The two parts are most easily broken down by their .NET namespaces: everything under the System.Web.UI.* namespaces can be considered “Web Forms” and the rest of the System.Web.* namespaces can be considered “ASP.NET.”

Like Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC (whose ...